Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man’s knowledge.
Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are only good intellectual tools.
Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.
The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.
The only really interesting thing is what happens between two people in a room.
We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further.
Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.
Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.
The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
The remedy is worse than the disease.
Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.